As Scott Wiener and his new Board of Supervisors colleagues get ready to assume office in a few weeks, it is time that the LGBT community takes a critical look at our electoral success since district elections.
The Board of Supervisors used to be the LGBT community's farm system for developing candidates for higher office. In the 10 years leading up to the switch to district elections in 2000, the city's voters elected a superstar class of LGBT supervisors who helped change the face of politics in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Washington. But future leadership is just as important, and we should be asking the question: are we getting the most out of district elections?
Beginning in 1990, San Francisco voters citywide elected six of our candidates to the Board in an at-large election system: Roberta Achtenberg (later appointed one of the Clinton administration's highest ranking LGBT officials); Carole Migden (two-term supervisor, assemblywoman, state Board of Equalization member, state senator); Susan Leal (five years on the board, elected city treasurer, appointed San Francisco Public Utilities general manager); Tom Ammiano (13 years on the board, current assemblyman); Leslie Katz (five years on the board); and, Mark Leno (two-term supervisor, assemblyman, current state senator). And on three separate occasions, the city's voters elected boards with three different LGBT members at the same time.
Successful at-large supervisor candidates needed between 80,000 and 120,000 votes. Queer candidates could not count on just the gay vote to get elected. Candidates had to attract support from every corner of the city's diverse neighborhoods. That meant candidates had to relate to a lot of different types of constituents and to their problems, understand and be conversant about many issues that might or might not directly impact the LGBT community or our neighborhoods, and build coalitions with numerous groups from all over the city.
This dynamic attracted candidates with a complimentary skill set who either won office outright (Achtenberg, Migden, Ammiano) or were appointed first and then elected on their own (Leal, Katz, Leno). Once elected, at-large supervisors were supposed to answer to constituents from every neighborhood, and the smartest ones actually did, using their role on the board as a way to continue building coalitions and most importantly increase their reputation and name recognition outside of our community and neighborhoods.
Since 2000 however, only two supervisors have emerged completely from the district system, David Campos and now Scott Wiener. Supervisor Bevan Dufty is a hybrid of sorts, since he spent many years developing support in the previous at-large system (as aide to Supervisor Leal, then director of Mayor Willie Brown's Office of Neighborhood Services). Still, counting Supervisor Dufty as a product of district elections, there has been a 50 percent drop off in the number of new LGBT candidates elected to the board since 2000. For whatever reason, female LGBT candidates have not fared well in district elections �" none have been elected since 2000. And so far, district elections have not produced a board with more than two LGBT members at the same time.
In district elections, candidates can get elected to the board with as few as 2,000 votes (and sometimes up to 14,000 votes) so that even successful candidates do not have to reach a large number of voters to win office. But as a consequence, most San Francisco voters don't become familiar with LGBT candidates and don't gain experience voting for them. That tends to keep our candidates in obscurity and doesn't help when it comes time to run in a larger Assembly or Senate district or citywide.
And then there's the influence of money. The switch to district elections was supposed to empower neighborhood candidates and remove the influence of big money. But in the most recent District 8 election, the top two candidates and their friends spent over $1,000,000 and together they received around 27,000 first-place votes. That means they spent an average of about $37 per vote, an astonishing figure by any standard. Successful LGBT candidates and their friends in at-large elections typically spent $5 to $8 per vote �" or less.
In addition, queer candidates in district elections now have to run against each other directly for the same seats, unlike at-large elections when queer candidates could (and did) run cooperatively for multiple open seats. With the combined effect of direct competition and the injection of big money �" both funds raised by candidates and "independent expenditures" �" big-time bucks are now being spent to go negative on our candidates �" over $115,000 in independent expenditures was spent in opposition to the top two LGBT candidates in District 8 alone.
For example, one candidate's labor friends spent thousands of dollars on an independent expenditure hit piece comparing Wiener to Meg Whitman. Wiener won anyway, but since negative campaigning drives down voters' positive impressions, people who barely know Wiener now have the impression that he is like a Republican (he's not). The fact that this and similar hit pieces against our candidates were funded by groups not controlled by the LGBT community (labor, real estate, big corporations) raises additional obstacles for LGBT candidates trying to run positive, grassroots campaigns while building solid, citywide reputations.
Why does any of this matter? Because the game has changed, but it seems we haven't fully adapted. In addition to the 50 percent drop in successful new board candidates since 2000, the school board now has no LGBT representation for the first time in many years, and Lawrence Wong is the sole LGBT member of the community college board. At the same time, our community's political organizations seem to spend much of their resources campaigning in a few districts for competing candidates when they should also be working together to identify, develop and support viable LGBT candidates in all 11 supervisor districts (and for the school and college boards too). As a community, we should refocus efforts on candidate recruitment and training, voter education and coalition building. Future candidates and their moneyed friends should commit to clean campaigning with a limited and positive role for independent expenditures.
It remains to be seen if a new crop of leaders can rival the accomplishments of the first group �" Dufty, for example, has certainly emerged from the district system with a legitimate shot at becoming the next mayor. But, more work needs to be done to ensure our community's ongoing electoral success at the Board and beyond.
Bill Ambrunn is a San Francisco attorney. He worked as chief of staff for former Supervisor Susan Leal from 1994 to 1997, serving as liaison to the LGBT community and to the Castro and surrounding neighborhoods.